


Haunted By Theives

by secretbeatheroes



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Blood, Canonical Character Death, Canonical Child Abuse, Celtic Mythology & Folklore, Eventual Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent, F/M, Fluff, Gansey is confused, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Minor Henry Cheng/Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent, Multi, Noah will not be ignored, Not Canon Compliant, Referenced - Freeform, also there will be, eventual Pynch, lynch family - Freeform, minor smut, not explicit, virginia royalty
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-08-19 20:57:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16542107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secretbeatheroes/pseuds/secretbeatheroes
Summary: “What fresh tree hippie hell is this,” snapped Ronan Lynch.





	1. Noah, I Don't Think We're In Cabeswater Anymore

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this when I was 15, before the release of The Raven King and I never ended up posting it for one reason or another. Please be gentle!! It's a canon-divergence as such, though I'll be editing bits of it to be more canon compliant because I really do love what Steifvater's done with the series since I wrote this. The title is from 'All The Kings' by Editors

Adam Parrish hated airplanes. 

There wasn’t much he knew about himself at the moment; he wasn’t really sure who he was anymore, or what he was becoming, or fully why he was going where he was. Cabeswater had taken these things just as surely as his hands and eyes. There was a certain comfort in knowing things and right now Adam knew one thing for sure. He hated airplanes. He hated the airport, hated checking bags, hated security, hated boarding, hated liftoff, certainly hated turbulence, and though he had not yet experienced landing, he had a sneaking suspicion that he would hate it too. 

The cabin was fairly large, bigger than he had expected. Adam was used to small spaces. He didn’t mind the slightly fuzzy blue seats with the ugly patterns customary to public transport or the buzzing chatter of people at least trying to be quiet. What Adam did mind was being trapped in a metal tube thirty thousand feet above the ground speeding towards an unclear destination on an unclear mission. He sat angrily gripping the handles of his seat. With his feet braced against the floor, Adam stared blindly into the back of the seat in front of him, resisting the urge to slouch and relieve his knees, which were locked tightly between the back of his chair and the chair in front of him. Perhaps, if the circumstances were different, he would be embarrassed to be the only one sitting so stiffly, the only movement a frenetic twitching of his skinny fingers. As it was, though, Adam was pretty sure his stillness was the only thing preventing him from shattering into a thousand, white-hot pieces. 

He wanted to hit something. He wanted Gansey to not be sitting next to Blue, excitedly pointing out of the window, his lips too close to her ear. Blue was unafraid; “You’ve ridden in a helicopter,” she had reminded him, “and this is way less likely to drop us into the abyss and kill us than most of the things we’ve done this year.”

He had tried to explain that helicopters made at least some sense. Terrifying, yes, but small. They at least looked a bit like they were supposed to leave the ground. Airplanes were huge. He didn’t want to think about how much it weighed. He didn’t want to think about how many people were on it. He didn’t want to think about Gansey paying for for his ticket or how much it had cost. If it hadn’t been for-- Adam didn’t look at Ronan. He didn’t have to. Ronan was asleep, or pretending to be asleep. Instead, he watched as Chainsaw fidgeted on top of her plastic case, trying to get at the dream note that named her as a ‘service crow’. Gansey had taken the whole affair with the grace he took everything, but the strain was showing on everyone. Gansey wasn’t dying, but he had only recently been dead, and no one was sure what came next. Ronan was almost definitely dying. For all they knew, Adam was dying too. That would be his luck. The only one they weren’t worried about was Noah, because Noah was already dead.

Noah, the lucky bastard, was not a part of their expensive doomsday trip. They’d spent too long arguing over whether or not they had to buy him a ticket before Calla had testily reminded him that traveling across the pond wasn’t exactly within the range of the ley line. Maybe that’s why he felt so sick. Or maybe it was the fifth bout of turbulence since taking off. Ugh.

He closed his eyes and did his best to disappear, risking movement to bring his knees up to his chin and wrap his arms around his calves. He probably looked ridiculous, but he was too tired to care. The wings of the plane rattled like loose teeth, and Adam felt them through his bones, through Ronan’s bones. Closing his eyes had been a bad idea. He was aware of every movement made around him: the kid kicking the back of his seat, someone opening a cellophane package, the shudders rocking the cabin with each gust of wind, and Ronan. The faint, tinny strains of something suitably metal and angsty bled out of his earbuds, and his hands were shaking with the plane. His hand. His hand which was suddenly gripping Adam’s hand. His cold, thin, soft--

“Adam. Adam what the fuck, are you ok?!” Adam jumped, snatching back his hand, kicking the seat in front of him in surprise. Ronan was staring at him, his eyes tightening with concern. He didn’t fit on the plane. It wasn’t shaped for him. He was too tall, head brushing the ceiling even if he was slouching. His limbs were long and restless. Now, turned to face Adam, his elbows were jabbing into his seat and the seat in front of him, knees splayed impossibly. The King of Ravens, Adam thought, and felt ridiculous. He half wanted to take back Ronan’s hand, but he decided to save his dignity and took a shaky breath instead.

“Yeah. I’m fine. I hate planes.”

“Bitch,” said Ronan, grinning. Adam rolled his eyes as Ronan scooted around in his seat until he was slouching with his feet against the back of the seat in front of him. “Tuck me in, will you?” he asked. 

“What?”

Ronan slitted his eyes at Adam and tossed him the complementary thin maroon blanket. “Tuck it. Under my chin. I can’t move and it’s cold as balls in here.” Adam blinked and Ronan batted his eyelashes. "Would you like me to break it down for you, Parrish?" he asked, glaring. Adam did his best to glare back and took the blanket.

It was cold. He hadn’t noticed. Awkwardly, he draped the blanket around Ronan’s hunched figure and tucked it under his chin. His face was sharp and warm, his skin familiarly, yet still surprisingly, soft. His wirey limbs, so strong in the room above Saint Agnes’ and the Barns were strangely fragile in the cramped confines of the plane and difficult to maneuver. Ronan’s eyes were closed, his breathing shallow, and Adam studiously ignored the way his fluttering eyelids were sunken and his cheeks hollow. He didn’t want to think about why they were headed to Ireland, and he didn’t want Blue and Gansey to see... something. 

He almost wanted to try to sleep with his head against Ronan’s bony shoulder but decided against it. Ronan Lynch, maroon blanket or no maroon blanket, was as angular, fragile, and foreboding as a broken glass statue. His chin jabbed into his knees and his elbows stuck out like shark’s teeth. His hair was starting to grow out and Adam resisted the urge to touch it. Gansey had once confessed to Adam that he could see a younger, happier Ronan in his face when he slept, but all Adam could see was a raw vulnerability that made him vaguely uncomfortable. Pressing himself against the cold wall and wrapping himself in his own flimsy blanket, he fell into an uneasy slumber. Thirty thousand feet above the ground and endless miles from Cabeswater, Adam Parrish did not dream.

⇎

Ronan Lynch had long forgotten the luxury of normal dreams, but fuck was he glad that this was one. The last thing he wanted to do was pull something unexplainable out with him, night terrors or bombs or bees. Bees on a plane. That sounded like a great idea. He hadn’t intended to fall asleep. He’d be more frustrated if this meadow he was sitting in wasn’t so fucking pretty. This was a lucid dream, like most, but it wasn’t Cabeswater. This dream was flimsy as a soap bubble, but Ronan didn’t really feel like popping it yet. He pulled himself up, feeling the grass spring back where he had compressed it. It wasn’t quite there, wispy and insubstantial as the stray threads of an unraveling sweater. Ronan scoffed at it.

He walked around, poking at trees and mushrooms and throwing crab apples at the skittering things in the grass. The dream quickly got boring. He started to wonder why he was having a normal dream-- was he too far from Cabeswater? Had he actually succeeded in-- nevermind. He would worry about that later. 

“Hey FUCKNUT,” screeched something behind him. With the unpredictability of dream physics, Ronan jumped about a foot in the air. Nice. He was about to try again when he was attacked by a bundle of feathers and claws. Chainsaw-- but no. The bird had Niall’s eyes. His eyes. He fought off the bird, spewing curses and flailing his arms. She screamed with delight and abruptly changed course. With her beak, she ripped out a chunk of the nearest tree. It hissed and wheezed, deflating like a punctured bouncy castle and the dream collapsed slowly but inescapably around him. Plastic and tight, he choked on it for a moment, clawing it away from his face. The scraps of dream cut into his skin as he tore them away like cobwebs. He could feel himself grasping towards something, someone. The suggestion of Adam hung in his view a moment, sleeping beside him. The blanket was bunched around his knees and his arms were wrapped tight around his body, compressed into the chair until even his feet barely poked off of the edge. His eyelids twitched frantically, and he had squished the complementary flight pillow between his thighs and his chest. Ronan broke just looking at him. Adam, he thought, fuck, man, wake me up before I die here. There was a rattling of plane wings, no, bones, no, trees, and the dream shattered to reveal a towering forest. Panting, he fell to his knees. He felt as though he had rubbed himself in cheap soap and stepped out of a hot shower into frigid air-- tight, itchy, and suffocatingly cold. He decided that he was not a fan.

The bird was still laughing, but she wasn’t a bird anymore. She was a woman, tiny with hair the color of the bird’s feathers. She looked like Declan. Ronan instantly disliked her. When she smiled, she looked like a crow again. Ronan started walking away from her. Nope, he thought, not today, Cabeswater.

So it wasn’t quite Cabeswater, that much was clear, but it was definitely a capital D Dream. The flowers were dream purple, the shade he’d never seen outside of Cabeswater, and the forest was believably real. The moss was pulpy and cold and it bled thin, dirty water when he stepped on it. The trees were solid and rough, each individually knotty and scarred. Not the cheap stuff of the meadow. He almost stopped to admire them, but he caught himself. The woman was probably pretty annoyed by this point, but she wasn’t following him yet, as far as he could tell. “Ronan,” she said softly, “I know what happened to your father.” Her voice was low, accent Irish. Figures.

“Yeah, me too,” said Ronan without turning. The woman began walking behind him, and he smiled to himself at the small victory. He knew how this worked from a lifetime of dealing with pretentious asshats at Aglionby. There was power in making someone come to you, an upperhand in not caring what they had to stay. Walk away, and you get the power. 

“I know what you did for your brother, Ronan Lynch.”

He didn’t stop walking.

“You’re dying, my dear.”

Ronan didn’t even flinch.

“Matthew will die with you. You will die and he will dream forever.”

He stopped. “Yeah, no shit,” he said, but his voice was shaking. He turned to face her. He closed his eyes and pictured a switchblade, something big and scary. He didn’t really intend to use it as anything more than a scare tactic. Mostly. When he opened his eyes, a fancy handled butter knife sat in the grass. He ran his forearms across his teeth, snapping at a leather band. Fine. Sure. Whatever. 

The woman laughed, picking up the butter knife. She twirled it around a bit, showing off before it became a switchblade, and then a crow feather, and then nothing. 

“You don’t know this line yet, Ronan Lynch,” he shrugged.

“You wanna wait around while I figure it out?” he asked, and she smiled again. God he hated that smile. She looked like Dylan. That was probably freaking him out the most.

“I’ll see you when you land, Ronan Lynch,” she said, and suddenly he was descending, stomach dropping. He bounced downwards into darkness as the plane hit the track with a lurch. He was falling, falling, his ears full of cotton and the plane jerking and shuddering with unwillingness to part with the sky. Ronan’s eyes flew open and he sat bolt upright, slamming his head into the overhead compartment. He swore and looked at Adam, who was clutching Chainsaw’s carrying case in dusty hands tight with bone, his eyes screwed shut. Ronan wanted to reach out and touch him, take his hands or hold him, calm him, but he wasn’t sure Adam wanted to be touched so he didn’t. 

As he moved to untangle himself from the flimsy blanket, something fluttered to the ground. Through the chaos of the plane’s occupants rising, stretching, and fighting over access to headspace, Ronan almost didn’t see the glossy crow’s feather or the symbol etched into the quill in the nearly-triangular shape of the ley-lines.

Of fucking course.


	2. Chapter 2

“Sit down, will you?” asked Calla testily. 

As the five of them made to sit, she threw an exasperated look in the direction of Blue’s shoulder. “Not you, Butternut,” she said, and Artemus, who had been edging in the door, gave her a sullen glare. 

“I need to be here,” he announced, straightening and spreading his arms in what would have been a regal gesture were he not wearing a balding sweater and the oversized pants of Olla’s ex lover, held up by paper clips and bits of twine. 

“Out,” Calla insisted, right hand forming a claw over her heart and pushing it outwards. Artemus looked aghast, affronted, and haughtily stalked out of the room. Blue looked impressed. 

“Show me how?” she asked, and Calla turned her prodigious glare to the daughter of the man she had just banished. Blue, though a seasoned veteran of these glares, quieted and went back to picking fruit out of her yogurt. 

“So anyway,” said Calla, settling into one of the innumerable ragged poufs on the floor and tucking her feet comfortably under her thighs, “what did you do.” 

Blue, arranging her skirts made from newspapers and heavy embroidery thread, looked simply confused. Gansey looked politely puzzled from his elegant sprawl on the carpet, and Noah looked smudgy. Ronan, on the other hand, scowled into the leather bands on his forearm, and Adam grew so still he could have been one of the many fertility vases scattered around the room, where he not so dusty and thin. 

“Yeah, I could have guessed it was you,” Calla said grimly. “Any clue what you were messing with?” Neither replied. 

“Well Persephone could have told you, but she wouldn’t, and she’s-- she’s dead, and I know about as much about the spiritual nature of the line and the voices of trees as your average psychic which is to say very fucking little, thank you very much. All I know is that yesterday, the pointy one--” and here she indicated Ronan, “tried to take something so damn big out of it that now he’s going to die.” 

Gansey’s polite puzzlement turned to shock and then anger within roughly the amount of time it took for Blue to spill her yogurt down her loopy crochet front. By the time she had finished scooping it up with her fingers, his expression was one of controlled patience. “You did what?” he asked coldly, and Ronan shrugged. 

“It was an experiment. Adam and I have been testing the whole graywaren thing.” 

“Without me?” asked Blue, whose offense seemed to make her hair even spikier. 

“And why would we invite you, huh Maggot?” asked Ronan dismissively, and Blue huffed. 

“Well, god, I don’t know, maybe because you were experimenting with magic? And I amplify magic? Did you ever think of that?” 

Adam had, and had also suggested it, but the mutinous look on Ronan’s angular face suggested that that this may not be the best time to mention it. 

“Sorry,” Adam said awkwardly, and was rewarded with a glower from everyone but Noah, who was absently humming the murder squash song, and Gansey, who just looked patronising. 

“Anyway,” said Calla with the air of someone who had been rudely interrupted, which she had not been, “there was a vote, so I’m supposed to find out what you were trying to take.” 

“This house is a democracy?” Noah whispered to Blue, and she leaned over to him, legs crossed and knees in the air like pixie wings. 

“It’s a constitutional oligarchy,” she whispered back, “more of a dictatorship now that Persephone... and Mom’s got her hands full with Artemus and the Gray Man.” 

“Orla’s okay with this?” said Noah doubtfully, and Blue shrugged. 

“Orla’s a free agent. Diplomatic immunity.” 

Noah nodded, sensibly. It was only then that they noticed the look of strained frustration on Gansey’s careful face, the way Calla had been shrewdly assessing a very uncomfortable Adam and a scowling Ronan. 

“It wasn’t anything for you,” said Calla, not seeming to have noticed Noah and Blue. “Was it?” 

Ronan jerked something that may have been a shrug, and Adam collected himself, his expression like one before a pop quiz; questions he hadn’t expected to answer. 

“It was free will,” he said, hesitantly, “we tried to pull out free will.” 

Then Blue understood. She had been trying to think what could have been so big; bigger than a car, a house, a farm, a forest. What couldn’t the line give? But free will was bigger than a house or a forest; it was too big to even conceptualize. Where would it start? Where would it end? 

“How?” asked Gansey in a voice so hushed Blue couldn’t tell whether or not he had meant to speak aloud. 

“I gave a piece of myself to the line,” said Ronan shortly, “wanted to remodel it, make it portable, consumable.” 

“A bit of soul that would grow to fit the receiver,” Adam finished, his voice hollow. “Making them a full person.” 

“Aurora,” said Blue, horrified, amazed. “Matthew.” Adam nodded. 

“I asked for a knife,” continued Ronan, “and cut-- something. Shimmery shit over my skin.”   
“Did it hurt?” asked Noah, and the others looked at him, relieved he had been the one to ask, terrified for the answer. 

“Not like a cut,” he said shortly, “like. Fuck I don't know.” he moved, then, shifting his position, snapping a band into his wrist. “Doesn’t matter. Buried it in the ground and watered it and then I tried to dig it up but it got big, huge, like a fucking circus tent or something and it was ripping up tree roots and the birds started screaming bloody fucking murder and I tried to cut part of it off but the dream knife broke and then I woke up.” 

“He was bleeding,” said Adam in the same, dead voice, his eyes fixed on his clenched fists, “from his eyes, his nose, his ears. Started twitching. Cabeswater kept telling me to run. Sent roots and vines to pull me away.”

For the first time Blue looked at Adam’s arms, striped with the usual grime from the auto shop but branded by long, thick red welts curling around the forearms and creeping under his shirt. Blue was ashamed she hadn’t noticed, and from his pained look, so was Gansey. 

“Then Ronan woke up and Cabeswater left,” Adam finished, not mentioning the way Ronan had bled for a half hour afterwards, how Ronan had been deaf with blood, blind, unable to speak but for wet, gurgling breaths that showed teeth shining in scarlet. How Adam had propped him up against the wall, stripped his own now-bloody shirt and tore it to strips, bandaging Ronan’s eyes and ears, stopping his nose, unable to leave him long enough to look through his car for a phone to call for help. How when he could breathe, when Adam had stripped the bandages to find eyes still grey and seeing, ears no longer thick with blood, Adam had cried and cried and cried. 

“Disappointed I survived, Parrish?” Ronan had asked, his voice still wet and horse. Adam choked out a laugh. 

“Don’t be a shitbag,” he had replied weakly, and Ronan had grinned up at him with his bloody teeth.


	3. Chapter 3

“Parrish,” said Ronan harshly. Adam did not turn or falter in his step, but he felt a sort of savage joy that he was being followed. 

“I have work in an hour,” he said, jerking open the dusty handle of the Hondoyota and slipping into the cracked front seat. Ronan opened the door beside him, and scrunched himself into the passenger seat. Adam turned on the ignition as Blue and Gansey ran out onto the porch. 

Gansey was panting slightly, manfully, his broad shoulders straining against the uncharacteristically rumpled fabric of his salmon colored polo. There was still something unbearably all American hero about the sweep of his hair, the frustrated hitch of his breath-- the beginning of an impressive black eye. Blue turned and kicked a moldering deck chair, causing Adam to notice her with a start. He had been so taken aback by Gansey’s dishevelment that he had barely noticed Blue, who was red and furious and looked a bit like Chainsaw; her hair sticking to her face like feathers, her glare sharp as talons. 

“What fresh tree hippie hell is this,” snapped Ronan; Adam had also failed to notice Artemus’ attempt at a stealthy exit behind Blue and Gansey. Ronan kicked the door back open, ignoring Adam’s sharp tsk of protest. Ronan was livid; Adam could see it in the pulse of his jaw, his tattoo slithering and writhing with his rolling shoulder blades. Ronan was livid; Adam burned for another reason. A dusty flush spread across his face, and it was another moment before he realized that Ronan was swinging a fist towards a bemused looking Artemus. 

“Ronan, no,” instructed Gansey, and Ronan stopped. Adam watched in frozen silence as Ronan trembled like a dog, mean but loyal, unable to fight the command. In an instant he returned to himself, folding his anger back to its usual size, and gnawing at a leather band on his wrist. 

“He do this to you?” Ronan asked Gansey, almost too low for Adam to hear. Ronan did not look at Gansey.

“Did you knowingly split your soul without asking me to help you find out if there was a better way or any consequences of such an action?” Gansey replied evenly, and Ronan scoffed. With a look that would have been petulant on a lesser being than Ronan Lynch, he turned his back to Gansey and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his black jeans. Walking jerkily, as though curtailing a run, Ronan tore open the door of the Hondoyata and slammed it shut behind him. If Adam were Gansey, he would have tried to smooth over the offense, try to clarify exactly what had happened and how to fix it before it festered. But Adam wasn’t Gansey; he didn’t have the luxury of time, or well mannered sensibility, or even the moral high ground. When Ronan tersely told him to drive, he drove. 

They reached Saint Agnes with a little less than forty-five minutes before Adam’s shift started, which is to say, plenty of time. Ronan exited the car wordlessly, slamming the door, unfolding himself from the confines in his rough, graceless way. A bedraggled and much harassed looking Chainsaw flew out after him, causing Adam to bang his head against the side of the car as he swerved out of her path. 

He had no idea how long she had been in his car-- or how she had gotten in, for that matter. But then there was a growl from Ronan, something guttural and impatient that carried impossibly from where he stood, a stark figure in front of the church, a blasphemy 

Adam exited the car slowly; he walked past Ronan slowly. He took each step as he climbed to the door of his apartment, and the hands on his keys and the door were slow, measured. He could feel Ronan behind him, felt the air between them pull as electric and tantalising as Cabeswater. Adam shivered. 

 

And then the door was open, and then it was shut, and Adam pushed Ronan into the wall and kissed him. 

Adam’s push had momentarily surprised Ronan, and the kiss distracted him, and when they broke apart Ronan caught Adam in the chest with his hands and shoved him onto the bed. He paused, a moment, looking uncertain, so Adam rose and ripped off his own shirt, narrowing his eyes and stepping forwards. “Fuck you, Lynch.” 

Ronan grinned like Kavinsky’s dragon. “I’m Catholic, Parrish-- and you live with my confessor.” Adam hated the grin; he bit it. Ronan shut up but shoved Adam back onto the cheap mattress and pressed his muscular shoulder into the rough bed spread. He was gratified by Adam’s smirk, the way he nodded almost imperceptibly when Ronan hesitated again, his teeth grazing Adam’s throat.

Galvanized, he bit along Adam’s collarbone, calling up half choked back gasps, and was rewarded by the dull scrape of Adam’s ragged nails against his back, the roll of his hips. 

“Craaaaaw” Chainsaw said, hopping excitedly. Adam swore. Ronan, not to be outdone, swore more colorfully. He scooped Chainsaw up into his hands and kicked the door open and deposited her onto the stairs, where she glared at him balefully. 

“Sorry kid,” he told her, and he took off his shirt, dropping it on the floor and swinging the door shut, closing his eyes for a moment to enjoy the waves of stimulus-- Adam’s harsh breathing, the stuffy air laced with the smell of cheap soap and Adam. Without hearing him approaching, Ronan felt Adam wrap an arm around his waist, slide a hand across his tattoo and over his shoulder, another hand twisting around his thigh and-- and this was more hands than Adam usually had. Ronan’s eyes snapped open as Adam, the real Adam, gave a strangled yelp from across the room. Another thick vine, that’s what they were, vines smooth and strong as limbs, slipped around his neck. 

“Cabeswater, no” Adam was saying shakily as Ronan began to twist, clawing at his throat and trying to figure out where one hits a vine. 

“Demitte eum!” Adam yelled, “Revertere Rex Corvi!” 

“Revertemus” replied the vines, their voices hissing like grass “si revertet quid tulit.” 

“Nihil accipio!” he protested, managing to wrench a vine from his neck as another twisted around his wrist. “Futuere!” 

Somehow this worked-- the vines retreated, slinking across the floor to caress Adam, who patted them mindlessly. 

“Futuere, huh?” he said, some degree of amusement on his slim face. Ronan scowled. Adam privately thought that just about any sane person/magical dream forest would react the same way when told to ‘get fucked’ by Ronan. 

“Stercus accidit,” said Ronan with a shrug, and Adam sighed. 

“Where do you learn these things? Do you teach them to Opal? Does SHE teach them to you?” 

Ronan did not reply, but made his way back to the bed, glowering at the vines, which tensed as he threw himself beside Adam. His hand found Adam’s, almost cold when he put it just below his sternum, and he absently rubbed the bumpy blue veined knuckles. “It’s the oaks. Swear like goddamned truckers. I think Niall taught them.” 

“That’s a lie,” Adam said, and Ronan bared his teeth at the vines creeping towards him. If a plant could look offended, this one did. 

“Quius mendax est,” gurgled the sink, turning itself on. Ronan jumped slightly, but Adam just sighed. 

“Dicebam vobis, aqua pretiosa est,” he said. The tap continued to gush. 

“Cupit quam non habemus,” it continued, “Accipit quam non possumus dare.” 

“Amate Greywaren,” said Adam, exasperated, and the sink laughed like someone coughing up phlegm. 

“Nostra est,” it said, “et sumus eii. Sed si succedat, moribimus.” 

“Nobis, quod interpretatur vos? Uel nobis quod interpretatur nobis.” 

“Ita vero.” 

“Very fucking helpful,” said Ronan savagely, and the tap continued to run, making normal tap noises. Adam untangled himself from Ronan and the vines to turn it off. 

“We shouldn’t have done it,” he said, his voice low. He didn’t look at Ronan. 

Ronan shifted, pressing a kiss behind his ear and pulling him into a spiky but not uncomfortable embrace. Adam let his head rest on Ronan’s chest, marveling at the still novel comfort, Ronan fitting him better than his own skin. They lay there in silence as the vines retreated, as Cabeswater returned to Cabeswater. There was work soon, too soon, and more to do at Fox Way than he could allow himself to think about. A Latin paper, a biology essay, a ten page literary analysis on a book he didn’t have time to read but would read anyway. 

For now, though, he allowed himself peace. And Ronan gave it to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, taking Latin for 6 years has payed off!! 
> 
> The conversation means: 
> 
> "Release him! Release the king of ravens!" (technically crows but there's no latin distinction)  
> "We will release (him implied) if he returns what he took"   
> "I didn't take anything! get fucked!!"  
> "shit happens"


End file.
